It is a time of fear in the face of freedom, a time of an emptying country and swelling cities, a time for the widening of previous roads and the opening of new paths, yet a time when these paths are mined by knowing algorithms of the all-seeing eye. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection. These are the times when maps fade, old landmarks crumble and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.

Tracking Republicans for President in CafePress and Google Trends Searches (3-18 to 4-1-2009)

Unless Barack Obama miserably fails at his presidency — or someone does something to him — we can expect the Democratic Party to shoo challengers off the field and give Americans the choice of Barack Obama or Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential primaries. The question for 2012 is who the Republicans will choose as their champion. The jockeying and showboating has already begun; what are Americans’ reactions?

Today I’d like to share two measures of attention given to Republican candidates. The first is a weak measure of interest: searches Google for the name of a presidential candidate on a certain day. Below is a graph showing Google searches for eight possible GOP presidential contenders. The metric Google uses isn’t the sheer number of searches for each candidate; it’s a standardized score to show relative differences:

Google searches indicate interest in information about a candidate that may vary in strength, including weak curiosity. To track a stronger, more committed level of excitement about the GOP presidential contenders, we can look at searches for political merchandise on the merchandise website CafePress to see how many promotional political items supporting the various contenders are being sold. When someone comes to CafePress, their searches express a commitment to some sentiment so strong that they’re willing to spend money so they can express their sentiment publicly.

The following is a graph of the frequency of CafePress marketplace searches for the names of various Republican presidential contenders from March 18 to April 1, 2009:

Sarah Palin is a consistent leader across the two kinds of searches, both searches for information and searches for political merchandise. Most of the other Republican presidential contenders searched for — Bobby Jindal, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee — are clustered consistently in a secondary category. But for two other possible presidential contenders, results diverge across the two types of searches. Not many people search for stickers, buttons or t-shirts promoting Ron Paul, but a number of people do search for his name on Google. Conversely, people are searching for John McCain on Google only moderately these days, but there are a large number of searches for John McCain merchandise. Knowing what we know about these two politicians, the results make sense: there’s a small but dedicated contingent of people who follow Ron Paul’s speeches and actions in Congress online, but they figured out a year ago that he wouldn’t be a significant presidential contender. On the other hand, with his presidential campaign over John McCain has fallen down to the level of just one more national politician. His role as a past presidential nominee guarantees some level of interest in collectible campaign memorabilia.

If this interpretation is spot on, we should see interest in John McCain campaign gear decline over time. If both sorts of searches remain strong for Sarah Palin, that will be an indication of a bright future for her as a candidate — at least within the Republican Party.

2 comments to Tracking Republicans for President in CafePress and Google Trends Searches (3-18 to 4-1-2009)

There is a lot of talk here in SC about our governor, Mark Sanford, and his political aspirations. I don’t know whether he’s getting much national coverage yet, but you can expect to hear a lot more about him before the next presidential election. I suspect that he will become a strong Republican contender.

I want Paul to run again so I hope to vote for him in the GOP primary and general, but if we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2012, maybe I should be voting in the dem primary for an Obama challenger.

I do like Sanford though. If we’re out of Iraq, maybe I’ll vote for him in the primary and the libertarian or Constitution party in the general.

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